“He is not my servant,” Durand said grudgingly, glaring at Justin.
“I could be his baseborn son for all it matters! My lord, what of Lady Arzhela?”
“I do not know you,” the abbot responded icily, “and I am not in the habit of being accosted by strangers.” He included Durand in that rebuke, glancing from one to the other suspiciously, and Justin hastily knelt in the road.
“Forgive me, my lord abbot,” he said humbly. “I did indeed misspeak myself. But we have reason to fear for Lady Arzhela’s safety. Can you at least assure us that she has come to no harm?”
Mollified somewhat by Justin’s penitent demeanor, the abbot was silent for a moment, considering. “I need to know your identity,” he said at last.
Justin’s brain was racing, weighing his options. They dare not mention Lord John’s name, not in Brittany. But the abbey lay within King Richard’s domains, within Normandy. Why, though, would King Richard’s men be seeking the Lady Arzhela? If that got back to Constance, there’d be hell to pay.
“I am Sir Luke de Marston,” he said, going with the first name to pop into his head. “I am foster brother to Simon de Lusignan.” He was gambling now that Arzhela’s liaison with de Lusignan was an open secret, and gambling, too, that she’d much rather be called to account for her sexual sins than for her political ones. “Simon and Lady Arzhela… they quarreled a fortnight ago. She has refused to see Simon since then, and he hoped that if we told her how very sorry he was, her heart might soften toward him…”
“That is the truth, my lord abbot,” Durand chimed in, shooting Justin a glance of surprised approval. “We are on a mission of mercy, if you will. We promised Simon that we’d put in a good word for him with his lady. The poor sod has been so lovesick that we could endure his lamenting and moaning for not another day!”
The abbot was regarding them with an odd expression, not easy to decipher. Justin was trying to come up with a plausible answer for the question he was dreading: Why is the Lady Arzhela in danger? To his astonishment, it was not asked. Instead, Abbot Jourdain said, choosing his words with conspicuous care, “Is it possible that Simon could not wait, that he acted on his own to mend this breach between them?”
“I suppose so,” Durand acknowledged cautiously, and both he and Justin were taken aback by the abbot’s emotional reaction. He closed his eyes for a moment, embracing hope like a drowning man might grab for a lifeline.
“That would explain it,” he cried. “Thanks be to the Almighty and Blessed St Michael! She must have gone off with de Lusignan!”
“Are you saying she is missing?”
The abbot was so relieved that he did not even notice the terseness of the question. “So we thought. She rode over to Genets yesterday and told her servant that she’d be staying the night. But when he went to the priory guesthouse this morn, she was not there. Her mare was still in the stable, and a search turned up a mantle that her man claimed as hers. None had seen her, though, since yesterday, none knew where she might have gone… I felt I had no choice but to inform the duchess, for the Lady Arzhela is her cousin. But now there is no need, for if it was a lover’s quarrel… We all know how foolish women can be at such times…”
He got no further, his words trailing off and his smile fading, for Simon de Lusignan’s friends had whirled and were running for their horses. As the blacksmith led a grey stallion out, the man who called himself Durand de Curzon vaulted up onto the animal’s back and spurred after the others. The blacksmith was shouting that they owed him money, village dogs had begun to bark, and the abbot’s escort milled about in confusion, uncertain what was expected of them.
“My lord abbot? Shall we go after them?”
Abbot Jourdain’s shoulders slumped and he rubbed his fingers gingerly against his temples, like a man stricken with a sudden, sharp headache. By now the riders were already out of sight, the dust beginning to settle. “No,” he said slowly. “I shall have to continue on to Fougeres, after all.”
They reached Mont St Michel as the late-afternoon shadows were lengthening. In spite of his fear for Arzhela, Justin was awestruck at sight of the abbey. At first glance, it looked to be a castle carved from the very rocks of the isle, its towering spires reaching halfway to Heaven, the last bastion of Christian faith in a world of denial and disbelief. A fragment of religious lore came back to him, that St Michael was known as the guardian of the threshold between life and eternity, and that seemed the perfect description for his abbey, too, a bridge between the land of the living and the sea of the dead.
Durand had reined in beside him, revealing by a muttered exclamation that was both involuntary and irreverent that this was his first sight of Mont St Michel, too: “Holy Lucifer!”
By now their men had caught up with them. Justin turned in the saddle as a local Breton approached and offered to guide them across the mudflats. Durand did not wait, though, and spurred his stallion out onto the wet sand. Justin called Durand an uncomplimentary name and then plunged after him. Much more reluctantly, so did the others.
While Justin and Durand climbed up the cliff to the abbey, Morgan went about finding lodgings for them in the village on the slope below. It was an easy task, for virtually every house offered bed and food; fishing was the primary occupation of the Montois, and more fished for pilgrims than for mullet or shrimp. They were soon settled in an ancient hostel called La Sirene, flirting with a sarcastic serving maid who claimed the unlikely name of Salome. Yearning for their daily ration of English ale, Crispin and Rufus had been thirsty enough in Paris to try cervoise, a French beer, but they hadn’t been able to get even that once they’d left the Ile de France. Now they stared dubiously at the cups of hard cider brought by Salome, but she brooked no refusals, pausing only long enough to slap Crispin’s hand away from her hip.
They were dunking bread in steaming bowls of soup when Justin and Durand returned, looking so somber that Morgan pushed back from the table and moved to meet them. Unlike the men-at-arms, who were surprisingly incurious about their mission, Morgan had done some judicious eavesdropping and he knew at once that they’d not found the lady they sought.
“We’ve ordered food,” he said, “and a Norman cider strong enough to peel paint off a wall. Would you eat?”
Justin shook his head. “It is a madhouse up there. No rumor is too ridiculous to be believed. The monks are like dogs chasing their tails, all going in different directions. They could tell us little more than we learned from Abbot Jourdain. But since she was last seen in Genets, that is where we go next.”
“Now?” Morgan blinked, unable to conceal his dismay. The men-at-arms had heard enough to alarm them, too, and they were staring at Justin and Durand as if they had suddenly revealed themselves to have horns and forked tails.
“Yes, now,” Durand said curtly, reaching down to help himself to one of the ciders while Justin beckoned to Salome. After a brief exchange, Justin turned toward a customer at a nearby table, a sparse, shriveled man of indeterminate years, with the deeply creased wrinkles and pale eyes of one who’d spent most of his life exposed to nature at its worst.
Morgan seized the opportunity to argue, even though he suspected that Durand was about as flexible as the granite stones of St Michel. “Sir Durand, we’ve been talking to some of the villagers and they say the tides are as treacherous here as anywhere in Christendom. Salome told us that they’ve lost count of the unwary souls drowned as they tried to cross the bay, and the Genets crossing is much longer than the one we made, nigh on three miles-”
“That is why we are hiring a guide,” Durand cut in. Justin was coming back to their table, and Durand raised his eyebrows in a wordless question. When Justin nodded, he jerked his thumb toward their men-at-arms, saying, “We may have a rebellion on our hands. These stouthearted cocks are loath to get their feet wet.”
That did not endear him to either Morgan or the men-at-arms, but his gibe was wasted upon Justin, who had thoughts only for the missing Arzhela. “Let them await us here, then,” he said impatiently. “I’ve found us a guide, but he does not come cheap, not for a crossing at this time of day.”
Durand shrugged; they were spending John’s money, after all. Draining the last of the cider, he started toward the door. When Justin would have followed, Morgan stepped forward. “Godspeed, Justin. I hope you find her.”
“So do I, Morgan.” As their eyes met, though, Justin could see that they both feared it was too late.
